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Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Catalan National Art Museum

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya abbreviated as MNAC,
is the national museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia,
Spain. Situated on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Maria
Cristina, near Pl Espanya, the museum is especially notable for its outstanding
collection of romanesque church paintings, and for Catalan art and design from
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including modernisme and noucentisme.
The Museum is housed in the Palau Nacional, a huge, Italian-style building
dating to 1929. The Palau Nacional, which has housed the Museu d'Art de
Catalunya since 1934, was declared a national museum in 1990 under the Museums
Law passed by the Catalan Government. That same year, a thorough renovation
process was launched to refurbish the site, based on plans drawn up by the architects
Gae Aulenti and Enric Steegmann, who were later joined in the undertaking by
Josep Benedito. The Oval Hall was reopened in 1992 on the occasion of the
Olympic Games, and the various collections were installed and opened over the
period from 1995 (when the Romanesque Art section was reopened) to 2004. The
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Museu Nacional) was officially inaugurated
on 16 December 2004